Action needed to address UK skills shortages, Cox tells CBI conference
5 November 2013
As the UK recovery begins to build, emerging skills shortages need to be addressed by the government, says Alistair Cox, chief executive officer at international professional and white-collar recruiter Hays.
Tue, 5 Nov 2013As the UK recovery begins to build, emerging skills shortages need to be addressed by the government, says Alistair Cox, chief executive officer at international professional and white-collar recruiter Hays.
Speaking at the CBI Annual Conference in London yesterday, where he was a panel member during a discussion on how UK firms can take advantage of international markets, Cox said that while there was a greater feeling of confidence within the business community than at any time in the past four or five years, “what is worrying is quite acute skills shortages”. Cox identified engineering, technical and healthcare as particular sectors where this was a concern.
Cox said it was “a worrying paradox” that such skills shortages could occur at the same time as 2.5m unemployed and half a million unfilled vacancies. It reflected “some inefficiency in the UK labour market”, he said.
He also said that the UK was not alone in its inability to find sufficient people with the skills it needs. China and the US, for example, were in the same boat, he said, almost a month to the day since Hays released its 2012 Global Skills Index, painting what Cox called “a deeply worrying picture of the world's labour forces”. Last month’s 2013 issue of the report showed deepening skills shortages.
Cox said the question for UK businesses was “how we as a business attract world class talent”, when world class talent was “well sought after, and increasingly scarce?”
And he suggested that government policy on education and immigration had an important role.
“We have to take a more sensible approach to targeted skills migration to find the skills if we can’t find them locally,” said Cox, who added that the alternative was unfilled vacancies.
Fellow panel member Ian Robertson, a member of the board of management at BMW, welcomed the government's growing commitment to apprenticeships. “I am delighted it is going that way,” he said.
John Cridland, director-general at the CBI, agreed that apprenticeships had seen a revival, but said that success wouldn’t be achieved until young people held vocational qualifications in the same esteem as degrees.
Speaking at the CBI Annual Conference in London yesterday, where he was a panel member during a discussion on how UK firms can take advantage of international markets, Cox said that while there was a greater feeling of confidence within the business community than at any time in the past four or five years, “what is worrying is quite acute skills shortages”. Cox identified engineering, technical and healthcare as particular sectors where this was a concern.
Cox said it was “a worrying paradox” that such skills shortages could occur at the same time as 2.5m unemployed and half a million unfilled vacancies. It reflected “some inefficiency in the UK labour market”, he said.
He also said that the UK was not alone in its inability to find sufficient people with the skills it needs. China and the US, for example, were in the same boat, he said, almost a month to the day since Hays released its 2012 Global Skills Index, painting what Cox called “a deeply worrying picture of the world's labour forces”. Last month’s 2013 issue of the report showed deepening skills shortages.
Cox said the question for UK businesses was “how we as a business attract world class talent”, when world class talent was “well sought after, and increasingly scarce?”
And he suggested that government policy on education and immigration had an important role.
“We have to take a more sensible approach to targeted skills migration to find the skills if we can’t find them locally,” said Cox, who added that the alternative was unfilled vacancies.
Fellow panel member Ian Robertson, a member of the board of management at BMW, welcomed the government's growing commitment to apprenticeships. “I am delighted it is going that way,” he said.
John Cridland, director-general at the CBI, agreed that apprenticeships had seen a revival, but said that success wouldn’t be achieved until young people held vocational qualifications in the same esteem as degrees.
